A literary Analysis of the Yellow Wallpaper

Essay on The Yellow Wallpaper
– A literary analysis and interpretation

At a time where women had little say in how to live their own lives, increasingly more female novelists began to write about gender roles with a critical outlook on the patriarchal structure in society. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is one example of a feminist social criticism from the late 1800’s. In this short story, the female protagonist is prohibited to do what she wants to do and instead is forced by her husband to rest alone in a room to cure her of her postnatal depression, thus ironically becoming more ill and hallucinative.

In The yellow wallpaper, the protagonist is introduced as a woman with seemingly a lot of literary potential from what we get to know about her passion for writing, enthusiastic and detailed observations of her surroundings and her vivid imagination. However, she is in an unfortunate situation where she is not allowed any mental activity, because it is believed by her husband and society to be the right treatment for women with a nervous condition. As an example she is told by her husband John, a physician and man of “high standing”, that: […] with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. In other words, the protagonist is ordered by her husband to restrain herself, which can also be interpreted as a general portrait of the repression of women in society. On the other hand the protagonist speaks very fondly of John and expresses that he does everything in well meaning: Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. In this way, the portrayal of John and the male gender role is not antagonistic as such, which gives room to nuanced reflections about male and female gender roles in that period of time. Yet in spite of that, the protagonist still shows signs of...

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Charlotte Gilman attended school and met Charles Walter Stetson who she married and had a daughter with. Mrs. Gilman went into depression within her marriage and the fact that she was pregnant with her first child. “Gilman went to a sanatorium in Philadelphia in 1887 where she was treated by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell…” (Charlotte Perkins). This gentleman is the same doctor in the story. “John says if I don’t pickup faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.” (517 Gilman) After rebelling against her doctors orders by not resting and kept writing she moved to California where she published stories she had wrote such as The Yellow...

...A Woman Trapped: A Feminist Analysis of the YellowWallpaper
The short story, the YellowWallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can be analyzed in depth by both the psycho-analytic theory and the feminist theory. On one hand the reader witnesses the mind of a woman who travels the road from sanity to insanity to suicide “caused” by the wallpaper she grows to despise in her bedroom. On the other hand, the reader gets a vivid picture of a woman’s place in 1911 and how she was treated when dealing what we now term as post-partum depression. The woman I met in this story was constantly watched and controlled by her husband to such an extreme that she eventually becomes pychootic and plots to make her escape.
From the very start of this story, the Narrator suggests that there may be reason not to trust all the actions of her husband. She describes him as a man with “no patience with faith, and intense horror of superstition.” Her husband, John, is a physician and of “high standing” and seems to have made it his sole mission to make his wife better. He has taken her to a mansion far away from town to rest from what he calls a temporary nervous depression. He serves as his wife’s physician, therefore treating her like a powerless patient. The narrator does not completely agree with her husband’s diagnoses or treatment of the condition, but does not dare speak against him. “John is a...

...﻿English 1A03
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The YellowWallpaper" (1892)
- American writer
- writer of fiction and non-fiction
- feminist
- wrote novel called "Herland" (feminist
- this short story is about women's mental conditions
- story read as critical response about how a male dominated world treated these illnesses
-she suffered post partum depression after birth of her first child
Feminist * criticism and literature
We might read Gilman's fiction as an extension of her progressive political and social politics, particularly her involvement in women's rights
How does fiction enable us to reflect critically on gendered hierarchies of social power?
"The YellowWallpaper" responds to 19th- century medical practice
- Provides alternative context for understanding "hysteria" and "madness" (mental illnesses ascribed to women)
- Critique of the "rest cure" promoted in the late 19th century by Dr. Weir Mitchell (see p. 79)
- Hysteria actually originates from word hyster which means "wondering womb"
Analyzing figures: conflations
Character: Husband/doctor
"If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency- what is one to do ?" (75)
- Answer given at the end of the story: one might go mad.
- husband and doctor coming together
- at this point...

...﻿Rachel Aho
3rd Hour
1/30/14
Literary Interpretation
In The YellowWallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a woman is sick with cancer. The woman is confined to her room partly due to her sickness, and also due to her controlling husband. The woman was put into a room with dingy yellowwallpaper, which made her insane. The woman was cared for by her husband John. Soon, she began to regain her strength. Even as she was recovering, her husband kept tight control on her. He wouldn’t let her out of the room. The woman eventually went mad with rage and snapped at the end of the novel. The YellowWallpaper is a symbol of the restraint a woman faces in her everyday life due to men. In The YellowWallpaper, Perkins tries to show the unjust treatment of women in the 19th century and how to escape said treatment.
Perkins is showing that women are locked away and told how to behave. "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane! And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back," (Perkins 55). By writing this, Perkins is showing that the narrator has become fed up with how controlling her husband is. The yellowwallpaper in the room symbolized the control the husband had on his wife, because the narrator was confined in the room by her husband. Furthermore, in the novel the room in which the...

...Since its publication in 1892, The YellowWallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has generated a variety of interpretations. Originally viewed to be a ghost story, it has been regarded as gothic literature, science fiction, a statement on postpartum depression, having Victorian patriarchal attitudes and a journey into the depths of mental illness. More controversial, but curiously overlooked is the topic of the rest cure' and whether Gilman's associations are fact or fiction. Evidence supports Charlotte Gilman may have misrepresented the Weir Mitchell Rest Cure, and pokes more holes in The YellowWallpaper."
The story's female character is suffering from "temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical(1) tendency," and prescribed a rest cure. The treatment enforced absolute bed rest, forbade physical, mental or social activities and required total isolation from family and friends. Eventually the lack of stimulation and complete solitude only added to the desolation, and pushed her to the brink of insanity.
The YellowWallpaper was based on Gilman's personal experience with postpartum depression and treatment received by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, pioneer of the Rest Cure. The parallels between her experiences and those of the story are noticeable, as are implications of late nineteenth-century patriarchal and medical attitudes toward women, during that time.
As a fictional story,...

...Student: Zhaolin Li
Instructor: Terry Heath
English101
Aug 7th 2013
In "The YellowWallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents the narrator, being the main character, as an ill woman. However, she is not ill physically. She is ill in her mind. More than any chemical imbalance that may be present; the narrator's environment is what causes her to go mad.
The environment changes the mind of the narrator. Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where in she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by mind.
Having this strong environment affected more than her mind set about things; it also affected her interpersonal relations that she had with her husband and what role she was expected to play in that relationship. This was a major factor to her breakdown upon entering into the bonds of marriage with Charles Walter Stetson, "an extraordinarily handsome and charming local artist" (Lane, Introduction x). From the beginning she struggled with the idea of having to conform to the domestic model for women. Upon repeated proposals from Stetson, Gilman tried to "lay bare...

...The Yellow Wall-Paper LiteraryAnalysis
Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.
The story begins with the narrator’s use of dramatic irony which already tells the reader that something is suspicious about her. “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (508 Gilman). The narrator, which is unknown, states her husband, John, laughs at her but she expects it. In a good marriage, one does not expect their spouse to laugh at them. Even from the first paragraphs, it is obvious the narrator allows herself to be inferior to men. She minimizes herself several more times throughout the story. “So I take my phosphates or phosphites - whichever it is – and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again” (508 Gilman). The narrator’s husband is a high standing physician and gives her drugs that will supposedly help her get well. The section “phosphates or phosphites” gets my attention. A first read of these lines might...

...“The YellowWallpaper.” Through the development of the narrator Gilman uses symbolism and imagery to awaken the reader to the reality of what a woman’s life was like in the 1800’s. Analysis of the symbolism throughout the story reveals that the author was not only testifying to the social status of the women in society but specifically giving insight into her personal life, and what she was subjected to. What appeared to be a mere, contrite story to many readers, was actually a successful strike at the wrong mindset that society possessed at that time.
The narrator was a woman who experienced these difficulties. Living in a house with her husband, John, she was confined to a spacious, sunlit room that contained hideous yellowwallpaper that she despised. Against her better judgment she was not permitted to write, draw, or work, but simply rest. Soon the wallpaper she detested became her only stimulus. She examined it by day and night, and began to see patterns develop and figures form. The vague figures took the shape of a woman trapped behind bars, constantly searching for a way out. The narrator sympathized with the enslaved woman, and began to contemplate ways to save her. The narrator becomes paranoid around her husband and the babysitter who she thinks are also trying to unmask the wallpapers true meaning. Finally the narrator becomes frantic and is reduced to a state...